Welcome back to Midday Magazine for this Wednesday, September 4th, 2024.
Have your host, James here, and we're spending the hour with our good friend,
Sheriff Sean Becker, and Wood County Sheriff's Department.
Sir, we have some other news that we need to get to as well, but real quickly,
I feel like this ties into, you know, this past story and the story we have coming up.
And it's something that nationally I don't see people talking about nearly enough.
And that is the situation that happened over the weekend with San Francisco 49ers
wide receiver Ricky Purcell.
He was in San Francisco, noteworthy, a very, one of our richest communities,
one of our most, you know, I spent a lot of time with San Francisco.
There's not a dirty part of San Francisco.
Like that is just a very well lit city, a very well, a good community.
You have a lot of people in California that consider that to, you know,
even more than Beverly Hills in some ways, the richer part of the state.
So a robbery, a robbery is attempted in this situation.
In a, in a, in a ritzy town.
So just putting it in that Ricky is shot through the chest.
Thankfully goes through at even more of a miracle and not no officer.
Here's the shots and I'm trying to find her name and I apologize.
I don't have that right out in my hands here.
I will have that before I wrap up.
But a San Francisco police officer sees this happens, gets over there,
is able to get information from Ricky about the assailant while also holding him
up and keeping the blood pressure all right, talking him through,
because he's asking her, am I going to die?
And she's telling him, no, not on my watch, not today, man.
And she saves his life.
And all this happens.
And I hear plenty of sports center, plenty of people saying that his story
and talking about him and it's very no worthy.
And I'm very thankful that he's okay.
Yeah.
But I don't hear enough people talking about this young lady,
this wonderful officer that handled this situation, again,
going from job, I'm on the job, I'm looking around for crime to saving a life.
Like that in the blink of a, quicker than the blink of an eye.
It's just miraculous.
What we ask of our officers and what we,
what we don't cover enough in society in these situations.
And we have another subject to cover here as well.
As far as it, I feel all three of these stories tie in together.
Yeah, well, it's, it's not worthy what you just said.
And I appreciate you bringing up the fact that, you know,
that the officer in San Francisco, you know,
witnesses are close by and, you know, does the life saving measures, you know,
right away and then still communicates, you know,
the information about the suspect out to everybody else.
So they can, you know, find them.
That's that huge because you got such a chaotic situation going on.
And you, and like you said, you got to change your, your thought mechanism to,
hey, now it's life saving mode, but I'm still going to have to multitask
and get more information out to stop other people from getting hurt.
You know, you know, shooting, you know, this, this football player,
which I'm sure the, the suspect, I think, is 17 years old.
It didn't matter who the individual was.
Yeah, his intent was to, you know, rob him, you know, and, and look what he did.
Whether they're shooting at a, a, a, a rookie NFL player or a police officer,
or these assailants, these people, they're not thinking about that.
They're not, they don't care about those subjects.
I, I did want to mention her name is Sergeant Joelle Harrell, Joelle Harrell.
And, and keep that name in mind, everybody, because that's a hero right there.
Absolutely.
And another story that we had to touch on.
Yeah, yeah.
Unfortunately, over the Labor Day weekend, we had a, we had a fatality, a traffic fatality
that was reported to us over the weekend.
It was on the 31st reported about 10, 10, 10 to midnight.
And just a very tragic situation is all traffic fatalities are because fatality means that
somebody obviously lost their life, but here you have a situation that we respond to.
And somebody was speeding driving left the center, intoxicated, and struck a motorcycle
that was pretty much head on.
And so then we're dealing with this situation and then obviously, you know, trying to save
somebody's life.
We did not make it and died at, you know, at the scene, that was a miles doer.
And now we have to look in the secondary mode, which now is really taking the priority
as an investigation.
And we've been very fortunate having, you know, those strong work relationships, like
I always say, the state patrol came out, assist us with that to do the traffic reconstruction.
And then we're handling the investigation and our end as far as, you know, dealing with
collection of evidence, taking statements, you know, doing everything that we're expected
to do under, you know, a tragic situation.
So the driver of this situation or this crime, basically, his name is Rate Abdul, 25 years
old.
And this is, you know, suspected now, but third offense drunk driving.
So you have a young adult, third time around.
And during an investigation, I had no problem sharing a lot of this information, previous
to the crash, they're in front of the corthouse, drinking, you know, snap-chatting that information
out.
And then even more so, the pastor that's with him, Trevor Paulson from Stevens Point
Area, is videotaping it and snap-chatting it.
And they have the whole crash on video.
The whole thing of taking somebody's life, there are no more miles, do or died because
they're all being extremely irresponsible, you know, drunk driving.
And now you look at the lies that are changed.
You know, the doer family has to bury, you know, a sibling, a son, you know, and I'm
sure there's many friends there.
And then you have this great, you know, Abdul that, all right, no, and he rightfully deserves
this.
He's going to go to prison for a long time and he should, bottom on, he should.
And that will have some impact on his family and I understand that, but he made the decision
to do what he did.
And I really feel that, you know, he's taking advantage of the system throughout all the
way until this tragedy.
And he's also got a high cash bond, which says a lot about our criminal justice system
here in Wood County, over $2 million.
So I don't foresee him walking out of our facility anytime soon.
But again, and it goes back to, you know, the social media platforms, you know, the
world we live in today where, you know, the communication is so, you know, it's, it's
ongoing.
It's, it's present.
It's, it's there.
And then you're, you're Snapchatting a tragedy.
And you're Snapchatting, you know, what's happening before that?
You know, in front of the court, else, you know, it just, it makes, you know, well, it's
terrible because, you know, you've got somebody now that, like I said, has lost their life
and now the aftermath and the family that has to live without their family member.
You know, they're loved one.
And just because somebody's being stupid and really doesn't care, yeah, bottom line doesn't
care.
You're 25 years old.
And this is the third time that that you've been put in a situation.
Now it's quite a bit harsher and you're going to pay, you know, and that's, that's
on him.
I appreciate the coverage and the details on this one and transparency as always, sir.
I have a number of follow-up questions, but they'll be off air, actually, because I,
we have a lot to cover.
And I, I do want to get to a couple of other things like you guys were at the fair recently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lieutenant Nadine just got the day shift and he spent 11 years on nights.
One of our, our younger leaders at the Sheriff's Department had a couple of years ago, you
know, took in the fair and say, I want to do a couple of things to really showcase our
department, you know, and he's done a phenomenal job.
I remember back in the day when I would work the fair with one of my great friends who
were tired, Ray Dorst, and we would be put up in a corner of one of the buildings and
nobody would come by.
I would say, what's this thing?
What are we doing?
But Nate took it to a huge level and, you know, brought in Marshfield Police Department
and really the entrance of the fair, you know, we have an area that we can showcase, you
know, our partnership with Marshfield Police Department, you know, and other first responders
and the dispatch trailer is set up right there and you're walking in and you're, the first
contact you're having is with, you know, with your first responders and law enforcement
officers from your community.
And so we had, you know, our armored vehicle up there, Marshfield Day, we had our snowbills
up there.
We had, you know, different people coming up, whether they're from the K9 unit or just
showing off some of our gear, you know, and things like that.
And Nate, you know, hey, that, he's there the entire week and then, you know, many of
us go up there and take turns working with him.
But just did a phenomenal job getting great feedback and I'm really proud of Nate for
taking something that kind of got pushed away on our previous administrations and then
coming to us with an idea.
I mean, you never know where your next great idea is going to come from.
And Nate had one he grabbed it and really, really showcased that our department and, you
know, law enforcement with the community and again, got some really, really good positive
feedback, not only from the community, but our county board, and this is that too.
And that's, you know, part of the people we work for.
Right.
And it's really good to hear.
But we were nice enough.
Civic media was cool enough to get us a booth over there.
We were there all week.
And when I was up there with Melissa, I kind of, I came in one entrance and went out
the other on purpose because I had heard from a couple of people that you guys were,
we had a shares department set up over there and I wanted to see how it was looking and
I also wanted to say hi because similar to what you were saying, I wasn't sure who was
stopping by and some of that.
It was busy.
It didn't have time to go over there or anything.
They had plenty of people over there.
There were kids over there laughing.
It was a really fun experience.
It was really cool to see what was going on there.
A big tip of the hat to him.
Yeah.
Thank you.
He really emptied out.
We had to do it a lot.
I give away.
He had a wheel.
He had to spin and kids would spin that.
And they get, you know, some a prize.
And it was, he did a strong job.
Yeah.
So I'm happy he's going to be on day shift because they could be able to do some more PR
stuff that, you know, we always could do, you know, we always could do more.
Yeah.
Speaking of PR events and events coming up, you have a
canite event around the corner.
We had a couple of wheelers from both of Wisconsin's Rabbids and Marshfield
that brought fries for us.
And they've been a great community partner as well, supporting the canine unit.
As well as the Wisconsin's Rabbs, Quantis, they did a fundraiser for golf art and they
chose art.
Their charity donated us to our canine units and we talked a lot about, you know, that
support that we've been getting from, you know, the community has been ongoing for
many years.
And it's gotten stronger and stronger and stronger with people that want to, you know, help us
out.
And our canine unit seems to benefit the most from it, which I'm not complaining.
People love dogs.
They do it.
And, you know, with the therapy dog and, you know, seeing other agencies, you know, doing
the same thing already, having a program like that establishes is pretty big because,
you know, getting low out there with Susanna, you know, at any public event that we can
get them to, it's a little different dog than the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the
police dog, you know, that has the job to either, you know, find articles or, or find
drugs or, or, or explosives or, or, or protect us, you know, therapy dogs, you know, hey,
come on, I'll sit in your lap, you know, and, and, and that calming, you know, effect
it has on people is, is huge, especially in law enforcement.
So, you know, a big shout out to, you know, the community partners and your foundation
or a Kesha foundation that is, you know, just done a phenomenal job of fundraising for
us and, and, you know, all the, all the community partners.
Huge.
I joke that people love dogs, but another part of this that I think speaks to the,
the, you know, increase or the rise of, of, not only events like this, but the community
wanting to help with the canine unit and the therapy dog unit and these things is the
under, I think we're understanding more and more that what our officers are going
through, what are expected of them.
And so many, I, I know in the community are looking at things of, okay, what do you
need?
What, what do you need to do your job?
Because we don't know.
And more that you, these kind of conversations or those kind of events where you're in
the public and you're able to communicate with people right back and forth and show just
to human being with a badge, like, some of these things.
I think it creates more and more empathy and hopefully, along with that, you know, doing,
being a recruiting tool and, you know, sparking something in a young kid.
We've talked about this with a touch of truck events and some of that.
A little kid comes by, sees a squad car, maybe gets a spark to be the next Joe Friday.
You know, we don't know.
That was a really old reference I just made.
I don't know if anybody even got that.
But, you know, I talked about it before, you know, coaching football and the connections
you make with, you know, kids in high school and it's pretty cool to hear kids say I
want to be a cop.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, I got hurt, you know, senior year, I was a saiger and he told me last year
he was thinking about, you know, law enforcement and he wanted to go play college football and
what would be a good, you know, college to go to and not only get the opportunity to possibly
play football, but also what would be great to guide me towards that career and law enforcement.
And he's still interested, you know, and we've talked about it even after his, you know,
career ending and not career, but season ending injury.
You know, he's still that something that that's his goal, that's what he still wants to
be in.
And that's cool.
And he's not the only one that I've had that conversation with, you know, while coaching
because people know what I do when I'm there and, you know, Tony Bialo is just awesome.
Yeah.
Of course, you know, I got history there, but, you know, with what he's done with back
the badge game, you know, and just, you know, our first home game, he goes, hey, take
your squad and drive and escort the team up to the field, like, and the kids liked it.
If the kids want to do it, I like, okay, but all they did and, you know, and lights going
and they, I was able to put some music that they chose on the PA and as we came up to
the stadium, it was cool.
And you throw that siren on and then they're on a field and that's, that's, that's, that's
it.
And you know how to feel about police escorts, you know, especially when it relates to kids,
when they do something really cool in the community, it's like, hey, let's do it because
they, that makes us all feel good.
We also want to congratulate one of our rapids own, one of ours that has kind of gone
on and it's a bit of a bit of a sweet feeling, but we do want to congratulate.
Yeah.
Joe's over flew.
He started as the police chief over at at Grand Rapids PD, you know, and we talked about
him before and he's been on the show before and had a phenomenal career with the sheriff's
department.
But, you know, I look at it, you know, miss him greatly, you know, miss him more than
people probably know, great friend, great leader, you know, great teammate.
But the other thing that you look at is you can be proud of a friend and an individual
when they, when they step up to a leadership position, you know, within our profession
and it's local.
So it's really, you know, it's awesome to see that I got a chance to stop by and see him
yesterday on his first day and just, you know, be asked with him a little bit and it's different,
but it's a good different because I'm very proud that, you know, he had the career with
us and it's going to continue as he leads another, you know, police agency within our law
and forced agency within what kind, it's like Scott Drew, you know, very similar, you
know, one of the ranks said at the sheriff's department and then, you know, we'll
don't lead part-outwards, you know, those are great friends to have and people that I'm
very proud of.
Just saying a big congratulations to him and his family, well deserved and enjoy Joe.
We'll see you around, Matt.
We'll see you around.
There is a new jail program I wanted to talk about the new jail and there's a program
you guys are doing over there with Midstate.
Yeah.
Midstate's been a great partner, you know, you know, within the community.
There's so many people that have talked about before, but Midstate came up with, you
know, another training program, something that we can put in our M.A. program, I mean,
and Ted Melby, you know, goes back a few years, he graduated from Spanish a few years after
I did, but we were fortunate to have talked about it before that partnership with Midstate
and with County and, you know, human services looking at, you know, hey, how can you provide
some leadership training for, you know, our department heads?
And Ted taught one of those classes that I went to and then he started off telling about
his story and then, you know, I'm like, oh, you want to smash.
Oh, okay.
Now, we got something to talk about.
Play football, you do this and then, so he's kind of striked up that conversation and
kind of developed into a friendship and then he has started teaching at Midstate full
time recently and then we kind of brainstormed, okay, what can you bring to our jail?
You know, I mean, you're doing some leadership training for your leaders within, not just
with County, but in the community, about what about, you know, something for our jail?
So he came in and taught a course for six inmates that really focused on, you know, once
you get released, you know, what's that next step?
You know, the goals, you know, moving forward, you know, a lot of those things and, you know,
that he put together as a course and I'm really proud of the fact that, you know, we're continuing
to expand the opportunities for people that are in custody that want to get better, you
know, because most of the people besides the two individuals I already talked about will
be returning back to the community at some time and, you know, six people, six inmates,
hey, want to try this and it's new and we got great feedback and something that, you know,
we're going to continue the showcase that, especially that relationship with Mid-State
Technical College.
A big thank you to them, as always, and what they do in our communities, wherever you have
a Mid-State, you have a technical that is putting into its community and appreciate that
and connecting with its community.
This is also a bit of a full circle moment because I would say that if not our first conversation,
one of our earlier conversations was, how do you stop the revolving door?
How do you stop the return criminal?
And so much of it was asking, you know, why you did what you did, giving opportunities
to these, to the individuals that are fighting for them that want to, you know, pursue them
and everything, because this isn't a handout, it's a hand up kind of situation with that.
And now we have a program like this involved where this is something that it's an extension
of that or an add-on to that, if you will, about, you know, hey, you tired of being a knuckle
hat?
This is how you can get out of this.
This is how you can end the cycle.
And for not just that person and that individual, but possibly generations of his or her siblings
or any of their children or any of these other things, it really does lead into other stuff
and it's very cool to kind of think of that earlier conversation and hear this one right
now in this awesome program that it exists.
I'm excited to see that bill.
I mean, it's hard to provide these opportunities now with our current jail, but, you know,
Mrs. Anna Wagner, who's our assistant jail captain, helps run the jail.
And, you know, the idea came up and she took it and ran with it.
She does a lot.
She oversees a lot of our programming.
And so I give a lot of credit for her to, hey, let's make this work, you know, because
we only have really one space in the current jail that we can provide, you know, any type
of program.
So it's always being used for, you know, a lot of the opportunities that we provide.
So, no, I think it was a great, you know, chance to do something different, something new,
and you know, highlight that, you know, that relationship we have with Mid-State.
Oh, always appreciate the times, sir.
A great conversation has always with you today.
We do want to encourage people if you do want more information or want to reach out to
Sheriff Becker.
You can do that.
I do have the website woodcountywi.gov.
You can find the departments in the Sheriff's Department there.
Woodcountywi.gov.
That's a great way to do it.
It's a good way, or just give us a call and call us through dispatcher or our non-emergency
line.
It just goes directly to Sheriff's term for money through hours, business hours, 715-421-8715.
Always appreciate the times.
Stay safe out there.
We'll talk again real soon.
Sounds good.
Yeah, and thank you again to Sheriff, Sean Becker, and our woodcounty Sheriff's Department
for joining us today.
We say a big thank you to our friends at Wisconsin Rabbits Community Media.
Big thank you to them.
Like and subscribe to their page.
Well, a more midday magazine coming up for you here at 97-5 FM 1320 AM WFHR.
We are locally grown radio.
